Wednesday, May 18, 2016

What is urban design anyway?

While architecture focuses on the buildings, urban design focuses on relationships between buildings and on the spaces they create in between each other, often called the "public realm." 

Urban design typically entails spatial relations whereas planning has become the regulatory framework that controls uses, circulation, open space and generally speaking, two dimensional relations between public and private space.

Urban design is typically not about regulation, but is more about designing a specific condition, and the art of designing a meaningful relation between the solid and the void, the building and the space, so that the void becomes as meaningful in its shape as the solid.

(Well illustrated in the figure ground representation of urban space). Urban design includes consideration of networks and non-physical aspects such as visual relations, communication, transport, air flow, infrastructure and the like in such a manner that solids, voids and the various systems form synergies, are sustainable, resilient, and equitable.


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